Poirot may be gone but the spirit lives on

Wednesday 26 February 2014 13:09 BST

Steven Moffat revived Sherlock Holmes with great success. Now crime writer Sophie Hannah is trying it with Poirot, given the task by Agatha Christie’s family.

“I’m not bringing him back to life,” she said at last night’s 5x15 event at The Tabernacle in Notting Hill. “Christie killed him off and I won’t be messing with that. There was a four-year period during which she didn’t write a Poirot story, so my novel fits in there.”

Hannah insists that her modern expertise — and sideline in poetry — won’t affect the narrative. “I won’t do anything that Christie would have disapproved of,” she said. “I’m not going to have him rollerskating and having affairs. She would have hated that.”